While the Salt Institute has always been quietly aware of its unique influence with policy wonks and lawmakers, we could not quite believe the speed with which our blog was able to galvanize the machinery of government into action. On June 12, only two working days after our Peace Chlor article, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, urged all operators of water and waste treatment plants to secure chlorine supplies from terrorists , even though at present they are not required to do so. The July 13 Newsday account indicates that an estimated 3,000 drinking-water and wastewater treatment plants are listed in EPA documents as holding in excess of 2,500 pounds of chlorine gas, according to the Center for American Progress.

Although not specifically mentioned in his announcement, we suggest that the ideas expounded in The Peace Chlor be considered carefully.

The tone and content of the Secretary Chertoff's message, coming so soon after our blog was published leaves us little choice but to assume that Salt Sensibility is continually read at the highest levels of government and when an opportunity arises to act upon our foresight and advice, they do not hesitate to do so.

With that vote of confidence we shall continue providing our considered thoughts on all aspects of salt's benefits to humankind.

On April 23, USA Today headlined the story, "Chlorine bombs pose new terror risk ." The story began by describing the Homeland Security Department's warning to U.S. chemical plants and bomb squads to guard against a new form of terrorism, namely, chlorine truck bombs. At least five chlorine truck bombs have exploded in Iraq in recent months, resulting in the deaths of scores of people and injuries to many more as a result of breathing toxic fumes. The 150 lb tanks of chlorine used by the terrorist are extremely common and routinely used for the chlorination of municipal water supplies or the disinfection of wastewater.

The Chlorine Institute , which represents the more than 200 companies that produce and distribute chlorine, recently alerted the FBI to several thefts or attempted thefts of the 150-pound chlorine tanks from water treatment plants in California.

These events motivated members of the House Homeland Security Committee, to send a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff expressing "deep concern" for the potential threat posed by chlorine.

Chlorine gas was among the first chemical weapons to be used as a weapon in modern warfare. On April 15, 1915, German forces released about 160 tons of chlorine gas into the wind near the Belgian village of Ypres. The clouds of the gas drifted into Allied forces, killing some 5,000 soldiers. Two days later, another chlorine attack at the same village killed thousands more soldiers.

Chlorine was first used as a terrorist weapon in 1997, when a serial bomber detonated several chemical bombs containing chlorine across Sidney's eastern suburbs that injured three dozen people. The universal use of chlorine for municipal water treatment, the relative ease with which the ubiquitous chlorine gas tanks can be obtained and the potential to cause massive casualties makes chlorine an uncommonly attractive weapon for terrorists.

Of course, now that Al Qaeda terrorists have had considerable success in chlorine bombing in IRAQ, much greater security will be required when transporting chlorine in future (whether in 150 lb tanks or railroad tanker cars) - not only in Iraq, but around the world.

However, another approach, which would largely eliminate the threat of chlorine as a terrorist weapon requires a simple modification of the current technology of treating water.

For years now, a great many pool owners have invested in chlorine generators which freshly generate chlorine for direct dissolution into their swimming pools. Starting with sodium chloride, a brine is made which then goes through a low voltage electrolytic cell to produce chlorine.

Using the same principal, John Hays, the water plant superintendent for the city of Washington, IA constructed his own electrolytic chlorine generator to serve the million gallon per day water needs for his town. In fact, his design is now under patent review and is the first fully functional municipal class chlorine generator.

John indicated that he began looking at alternatives to chlorine gas for both safety and cost concerns, and electrolytic chlorination seemed to offer the lowest overall cost of capital investment and ongoing operational cost. In a personal communication to the Salt Institute, John indicated that he could now accomplish the same chlorination levels for one third to one quarter the cost of conventional treatments.

On May 10, 2007, NSF International announced that John Hays' Washington, IA water treatment facility was the first to be certified by NSF International to ensure its chlorination system met all national standard requirements.

The Washington, IA chlorine generator uses conventional evaporated salt as it's starting material - a commodity that presents no terrorist hazards whatsoever. In fact, with the relatively small capital outlay and the operational cost-effectiveness, this new system can completely eliminate the threat posed by conventional chlorine stockpiles and distribution, while significantly reducing the costs of producing high quality drinking water. If ever there was a win-win situation, this is it.

Communities across America should be encouraged to use their Homeland Security funds just for this purpose.

Based upon the expected 13.6% increase in population per decade over the next 20 years, most of which will take place in the nation's warm and sunny regions, water is clearly the issue that will dominate our future. Because all U.S. fresh water sources are already committed, plans are moving aggressively forward to put in place the desalination infrastructure to meet our county's needs for the next 50 years. The coastal areas will most likely use seawater as their main raw material source, while the interior of the country will most likely use impaired groundwater or brackish water.

The main technological challenge to desalination is the disposal of residue water that contains three to four times the salt content of the input water. A good deal of this material is currently being pumped into deep wells, but the feasibility of this approach is questionable for the future. A major challenge is the determination of best practices to dispose of or utilize the wastewater streams coming from large- scale desalination operations. This was recently highlighted in a previous blog as well as an article in the April issue of Water Conditioning & Purification Magazine , "A Glass Half Full," by Mort Satin.

In the March SI Report , we suggested that a desalination operation's waste can easily serve as the raw material for another unit operation ("The salt-making/desalination nexus"). Just as former cheese factory waste product, whey, became one of the most highly valued products in the food industry, we speculated that desalination waste streams might prove to be a new source of raw material for the salt industry.

Just this week we see that is exactly what has happened.

Business Wire reported that GE Water & Process Technologies is to design and construct a reverse osmosis seawater desalination plant in South Africa, which will provide 70,000 m3/day of fresh water. In a first, the plant will recover ultra-pure salt from the concentrated brine stream for the production of chlorine, caustic soda, and hydrochloric acid at the refinery.

The $220 million project is part of a larger investment to build a new chlorine refinery in the Coega Industrial Zone, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

GE's seawater desalination and thermal evaporation technologies will create around 630,000 tonnes of 99.9% pure salt annually. Reclaiming salt from the desalination brine stream will not only improve the overall economics of the refinery project, but also ensure a reliable and locally available supply of high grade salt for use in the refining of chlorine.

This project will provide freshwater to help lessen water scarcity and use the brine waste stream as a valuable raw material for another unit operation.

Al Gore may have an Oscar for his scary big-screen anti-"global warming" film "An Inconvenient Truth," but an impressive low-budget Internet documentary, "The Great Global Warming Swindle " provides powerful ammunition to doubters that a Kyoto-type solution would be appropriate. See for yourself.

Anyone know a youtube.com producer interested in getting out the truth on salt and health?

Almost on cue and in response to the Business Week story this week, the November 17 issue of Science magazine reports that the underlying premise of the "wild fix" to "salt the seas" was a "False Alarm: Atlantic Conveyor Belt Hasn't Slowed Down After All ." It turns out that the cooling of the Gulf Stream -- and consequent deposition of its salt-dense contents further to the southwest rather than between Norway and Greenland -- was just another blip on nature's uneven and imperfectly understood cycle. The concern had been that with the warmer Gulf Stream failing to go as far north, that Europe would suffer a disastrous Ice Age (all caused by global warming).

Many scientists had doubted the theory and it certainly throws cold brine on hopes raised by Business Week that a new market for salt would be to dump shiploads of salt into the North Atlantic. Oh, well...

Now here's a virtually limitless NEW market for salt: Adam Aston in this week's Business Week identifies five "wild fixes for a warming planet." Number 5 is

SALTING THE SEAS

Scientists worry that freshwater from melting Arctic ice and Greenland's glaciers will dilute and disrupt the Gulf Stream as it loops through the North Atlantic. In the past, when this conveyor belt of warm water has stalled, Northern Europe was sent into a mini-Ice Age. To keep the current flowing, Robinson suggests that tanker loads of mineral salt could be dumped into the sea at key points along the Gulf Stream. Since saltier, denser water sinks, staggered deliveries of salt could jolt the cycle and keep the current going. Risks: Altering ocean chemistry on this scale could have catastrophic effects on sea life. Will we have a choice, though? "I'm as dubious about geo-engineering as anyone else," says Robinson. "But the fact is, with climate change we're already doing it."

We've got the salt and the ships. Who'd have thought we could make money by taking salt OUT of the ocean and then putting it back in? It's like WPA, digging holes and filling them back up -- for a good cause!

John Fund keeps a "Political Diary" at the Wall Street Journal . Yesterday's entry touched, tangentially, on mining; the message, however, is global.

Fund tells of Gheorge Lucian, "a 23-year-old unemployed Romanian miner" who is starring in the film "Mine Your Own Business" by filmmaking Irishman Phelim McAleer. A self-described environmentalist, McAleer went to Lucian's "poor village in Romania where environmentalists are fighting plans for a new gold mine." In a tale reminiscent of the successful environmentalist mugging of a new saltworks in Mexico's Baja California Sur a few years ago, the locals thought the new gold mine would be a community asset where they now face unemployment of 70% and were hoping for the 600 new jobs the facility would bring. McAleer was "mugged by reality," so to speak, reporting to London's Daily Mail:

"I found that almost everything the environmentalists were saying about the project was misleading, exaggerated or quite simply false. The village was already heavily polluted because of the 2,000 years of mining in the area. The mining company actually planned to clean up the existing mess. And the locals, rather than being forcibly resettled as the environmentalists claimed, were queuing up to sell their decrepit houses to the company which was paying well over the market rate."

This led McAleer to question the basis for his environmental activism and, ultimately, to producing "Mine Your Own Business," starring Lucian in a global quest to protect others from the fate of his Romanian village. Fund offers a couple examples: first, "Belgian environmentalist Francoise Heidebroek pompously tells Mr. Lucian that he and his fellow Romanian villagers prefer to use horses rather than cars, and to rely on 'traditional cattle raising, small agriculture, wood processing' to live" and, second, "an official of the World Wide Fund for Nature (in Madagascar) who argues that the poor are just as happy as the rich and then insists on showing Mr. Lucian his new $50,000 catamaran."

An enlightened McAleer concludes:

"The biggest threat to miners and their families comes from upper-class Western environmentalists. This film will shock and upset those who, like myself, unquestioningly believed environmentalists were a force for good in the world. It is sad that my fellow left-wingers and environmentalists who often come from the most developed countries are now so opposed to development."

Lest the lesson be lost, Fund headlines the Diary entry: "Who's the Real Polluter?" Surprisingly, he resisted the imagined impulse to find some way to include Al Gore in the piece.

In August 28 comments to Environment Ontario , the Salt Institute articulated principles it favors for inclusion in pending legislation to improve drinking water source protection in the Province of Ontario. Salt Institute president Richard L. Hanneman noted that the four Ontario salt production plants all operate under federal and provincial permits and recommended that source protection be integrated into the existing permitting program or, alternatively, that the new responsibilities and capabilities of regional conservation authorities include granting permits to avoid duplication. He noted the great strides that Ontario governments have made in improving their road salt management practices in recent years and recommended that the conservation authorities be encouraged to support implementation of the national Road Salts Code of Practice as the best management requirement for drinking water source protection against contamination from road salts.

If "Meridional Overturning Circulation" isn't a familiar term, perhaps the more popular concept of the "conveyor belt" describing how the Gulf Stream heats the North Atlantic (and keeps Europe from entering a new ice age) is more familiar. A series in this week's Philadelphia Inquirer examines the crucial role of the Gulf Stream with regard to global warming.

While many understand the importance of oceanic circulation, Inquirer staff writer Anthony R. Wood reminds readers: "A critical ingredient in the recipe for climate change is one of the most prosaic and plentiful substances on the planet: salt." He points out that understanding the "subtle but important " differences in the relative densities of salt water and fresh water is "the key to keeping the conveyor belt in motion." The warm Gulf Stream consists of more highly saline water evaporated by the hot sun in the tropics and it eventually sinks below the less dense arctic water in its path. If the salt sinks sooner, the prevailing west winds that transfer the warmth of the Gulf Stream to Europe will have less warmth to transfer and Europe will revert to temperatures more associated with its northerly lattitude. If "global warming" melts the Greenland ice pack, releasing more fresh water, it can affect the rate of salt sinking, perhaps changing the geography of the Gulf Stream itself ... and triggering dramatic cooling in Europe.

Whether or not global warming is a short- or long-term phenomenon, experts still debate, but there's no debate that salt plays a crucial role.